Barney's Blog

Avoiding Cloud Pitfalls

Many IT pros are wary of the cloud because they can't control the data and must rely on the service provider to keep hackers at bay. But the cloud, in many cases, is financially and technically compelling. So if the economics lead you to a cloud solution, do your best to make sure your apps are secure. A report from the Cloud Security Alliance has some advice -- and a few warnings.

Here are some things for you to think about and to press your cloud provider on: How does the provider handle patching and, in general, administer your system? Because most clouds are virtualized, what specific steps have been taken to make sure cracking one VM doesn't lead to hacking all of them? How secure are the APIs? And finally, what measures are taken to make sure the service provider's own employees aren't a risk? IT people can be just as bad as any other, as I discovered in this report that was entirely based on Redmond Report readers' experiences.

Have you gone to the cloud? How do you handle security? Let me know at dbarney@redmondmag.com.

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